Royal Air Force Station Gibraltar, better known as RAF Gibraltar and formally as North Front, is a Royal Air Force station on Gibraltar. No military aircraft are currently stationed there, but there are regular visits. The station functions as the Rock's civilian airport, Gibraltar Airport, and is administered by British Forces Gibraltar.
History
The biggest expansion took place during World War II when the runway length was increased using waste rock blasted from the tunnels of Gibraltar. At this time the airfield completely obliterated the former Gibraltar racecourse. The airfield played a major part in Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa during World War II.
The airfield, which today is used mainly for civil flights, is unusual in that the main access road from Gibraltar to Spain crosses the airfield, necessitating the road to be closed whenever aircraft movements are in progress.
When the RAF holds an exercise, this causes significant disruption to traffic flow.
RAF Gibraltar used to have an Avro Vulcan K2 as a gate guard, but this was later scrapped.
Gibraltar squadrons
See also
External links
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Saturday June 07, 2008 at 15:11:22 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.